1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fuel cell vehicle driven with a fuel cell as a drive energy source, and particularly to a fuel cell vehicle in which drivability is improved by arranging heavy components at appropriate positions.
2. Description of Background Art
A fuel cell type two-wheeled vehicle is known that is driven by supplying electrical power generated by a fuel cell to a motor with the rear wheels being driven by the motor. With a fuel cell system, electricity is generated by a chemical reaction between hydrogen, as a fuel gas, and oxygen, as a reactant gas. However, methods for supplying hydrogen are roughly divided into two types for a vehicle fuel cell.
One method utilizes methanol as a fuel and extracting hydrogen from the methanol using a reformer. In another method hydrogen gas is filled into the fuel cylinder in advance. Of these two methods, it is more common to adopt the latter system that does not require a large mass reformer as a fuel cell system for a motorcycle, which has restricted deadweight.
With the latter fuel cell system, a fuel cylinder filled with fuel gas and a fuel cell stack (or cell stack) for converting the fuel gas to electrical energy, constitute the main structure. Because the fuel cylinder and the fuel cell stack are heavy, the barycentric position is made higher due to the arrangement of these components.
Japanese Patent 2001-130469 and Japanese Patent 2001-313056 disclose two-wheeled vehicles powered by fuel cells wherein the fuel cell stack is arranged above a step floor below a seat, and a fuel cylinder is mounted above a rear wheel to the rear of the seat.
In both of the above disclosed Japanese Patents, there is a problem wherein as the fuel cell stack are arranged below a seat and the fuel cylinder is arranged behind the seat, drivability is impaired due to the fact that heavy components are arranged in a dispersed manner on the vehicle. Also, with both of the above-described Japanese Patents, since a fuel cylinder is supported above the rear wheel, there is a technical problem in that the barycentric position of the vehicle body becomes high.